Dismal Nitch

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Here are a few photos from a place called Dismal Nitch, a historical site and highway rest area on the Washington side of the Columbia River, across from Astoria OR. The name comes from the Lewis & Clark expedition; the explorers camped here on November 12-14, 1805, taking shelter from a nasty winter storm, and apparently didn't have a good time here. The site of their "dismal nitch" was only recently identified; anyone who's ever been to the Oregon-Washington coast in November knows the entire coast can be pretty dismal that time of year, so the name and description aren't great clues.

The historic campsite area lies just west of the modern highway rest area, and now belongs to the National Park Service, as one unit of the large Lewis & Clark National Historical Park. There isn't a lot there that evokes the year 1805 though; a busy state highway hugs the shoreline, and the shoreline itself is covered in riprap stone, I suppose to protect the adjacent highway. I'm not sure if there's even a trail or other access into the historic site. The NPS page says they're thinking about adding a trail someday, which suggests there isn't one now.

Skamokawa Vista Park

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Here's a slideshow from Skamokawa Vista Park, on the Columbia River at the small town of Skamokawa, Washington. I gather it's the star attraction of the Wahkiakum County park system, great for camping, playing on the beach, or just watching giant cargo ships go by on the river. I didn't actually do any of that when I stopped by; I was heading for the Wahkiakum County Ferry near Cathlamet, a bit upriver from here, and this was just a quick sidetrip to take a few photos. Photos I promptly forgot about in an old iPhoto library, which is why they haven't shown up here until now.

A page at Columbia River Images has more photos from around the park and vicinity, with excerpts from the Lewis & Clark journals regarding the expedition's visit to this area, including the famous "Ocian in view" bit. (Standard spelling and punctuation weren't really their area of expertise. But I suppose if you're Lewis and Clark, and you've just walked a few thousand miles to see the ocean, you're entitled to call it whatever the hell you want to.)

If you like what you see here and decide to visit, please note that the town (and the park) are pronounced "Ska-MOCK-away". If you pronounce it "Ska-ma-KA-wa" as if it's a Japanese word, the locals will be forced to mock you. Or at least they'll know you're a tourist from the big city, which is almost as bad.

Pics: Klamath Lake

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I was rummaging through old photos a while back, specifically ones from a mini-roadtrip around southern and eastern Oregon back in 2007, and realized there were still a few I hadn't done anything with. For instance I had a handful of photos of (Upper) Klamath Lake, the giant marshy lake just north of Klamath Falls and the California border. I had never been there, but was I was on my way from Crater Lake to Lakeview and was short on time and didn't plan on stopping, so I snapped a few photos while motoring along. Legal says I have to tell you not to do this, and common sense kind of dictates that too. I'm just saying it's what I did at the time, but that was a very long time ago.

I haven't been back since then, and going back isn't right at the top of my todo list, so I figure these photos will have to do for the time being. Although Klamath Falls does have a geothermal-heated brewery that I wouldn't mind revisiting...

Plaza Square, St. Helens

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St. Helens, OR, is home to the historic Columbia County Courthouse (1906), which (uniquely in Oregon) has an honest-to-goodness courthouse square out front. St. Helens City Hall sits nearby, the town's main street runs along the far end of the square, and Columbia View Park on the river is steps away on the other side of City Hall. The whole arrangement goes way past cute into serious twee, at least if you ignore the ugly 1960s addition next door to the original courthouse. I wouldn't be surprised if the word "Mayberry" gets used a lot here. I don't think I've ever actually seen an episode of the Andy Griffith Show, so I can't vouch for the pop culture reference myself. Ralph Friedman's In Search of Western Oregon (1990) says it has the "sleepy look of an Andy Hardy movie". I haven't seen any Andy Hardy movies so I can't personally vouch for that either. To go with a more Generation X pop culture reference instead, it actually reminds me of the Courthouse Square set used in the Back to the Future films, although the courthouse itself looks nothing like the one in the movies.

A narrow path meanders its way around the square. Titled "down the trodden path", it commemorates the journey of the Lewis and Clark expedition along the Columbia River.

The square is home to the city's municipal Christmas Tree each year, and -- more unusually -- hosts a pumpkin lighting in early October to mark a month of Halloween festivities. Apparently the city started this tradition after Halloweentown, a 1998 Disney film, was filmed here. The town's a popular filming location, actually; several locations around town were used in the original Twilight film, and the Governor's Office of Film and Television markets the town as a good shooting location.

For those of you who come here for the really pedantic stuff -- and I like to imagine you exist -- I have a couple of items for you, namely the ever-popular questions "What's it called?" and "Who owns it?". Just going by internet search results, people seem to just call it the town square, the courthouse square, or the Plaza a lot. The streets on the north and south sides of the park are labeled "Plaza Square", so I'm assuming that's the official name & going with that for lack of anything more definitive (although the park's a rectangle and not a square, technically). I don't have anything more definitive because it's not a St. Helens city park as you might expect; the county GIS system says the county owns it, but it's also not listed as a regular Columbia County park either. I imagine it's just considered part of the courthouse grounds or something. The only relevance of this being that it sort of falls through the cracks, internet-wise, and I don't have as much material as I otherwise would. I did find the lists of city and county parks while I was searching, so at least I've got those filed away for the next time I'm in the area.

Columbia View Park, St. Helens

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Couple of photos of Columbia View Park, on the Columbia River in downtown St. Helens, Oregon. I've posted about the park's goofy-looking Centennial Fountain already, and I seem to have missed all the other points of interest: A giant flagpole, a gazebo for concerts and Friday night movie nights and so forth, and a statue of "Seaman", Meriwether Lewis's dog, who came along on the Lewis & Clark expedition. It's crazy that there was a dog statue right there and I didn't get a single photo of it, but that seems to be what's happened. Could be that someone else was taking photos of it, or kids were playing on it or something. I don't recall now what the circumstances might have been.

I do have a few photos of the Columbia River with bits of the park included, and I figured they were reasonably scenic on their own. The above photo has a sliver of the aforementioned gazebo on the very left, plus a bit of Sand Island, a city park that's only accessible by boat, and has a reputation as a "no-rules party zone". Which in practice means way too much Coors Lite, or Corona if you're feeling fancy, and not recycling your empties, and boating without life jackets, and maybe shooting off some some leftover illegal fireworks from the last 4th of July.

This last photo, which looks south/upstream along the river, includes the northernmost tip of Sauvie Island. I don't think you can quite see the Warrior Rock lighthouse from here, since it's on the side of the island facing the main river channel, but it would be a short walk from here if there was a bridge out to the island.

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Centennial Fountain, St. Helens

A couple of photos of the Centennial Fountain at the waterfront in St. Helens, Oregon, built in 1989 in honor of the city's 100th birthday. The town actually dates to 1847, but they didn't get around to incorporating for another forty years. Not shown in these photos are a time capsule at the base of the fountain, and a huge flagpole a few feet away, which I think was behind me when I took these.

So yeah, it's a goofy looking piece of folk art, and it's all puffed up with red-state patriotism, the usual frothy mix of war and religion. The plaque even references a bible verse, so legally the city would probably have to let other religions contribute monuments too, thanks to that pesky First Amendment thingy the ACLU keeps going on about. The fountain doesn't even have anything to say about the city, or the centennial it's supposed to be honoring. And the plaque says something about the flagpole flying an enormous 50 foot by 30 foot flag; I'm fairly certain the one it actually flies it much smaller. Plus the correct dimensions of a US flag are supposed to be 10:19, not 3:5, so a 30 foot tall flag should be 57 feet wide, not 50. Yes, I was a Cub Scout once, why do you ask? Normally I wouldn't care, but if you're trying to demonstrate how hyper-patriotic you are, you should really make an effort to get the fundamentals right.

All that said, there's something strangely appealing about it. It's just so damn sincere. It wears its heart on its sleeve. They didn't go out and hire a professional artist or architect, someone who would've created something a bit more tasteful and centennial-oriented. Instead they rounded up local donations and volunteers and cobbled this fountain together as best they could. So I imagine the end result is an accurate reflection of local values and priorities circa 1989. If nothing else, it's a historical artifact, in a way.

Vancouver Lake expedition

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Here's a slideshow from Vancouver's Vancouver Lake Park, mostly of the far side of the lake near where the road peters out. I always forget there's a lake this big in the Portland area. Partly because it's up in Vancouver, and partly because it's your basic Pacific Northwest wetland nature area, the same as everywhere else but larger, and with the ongoing water quality issues of a suburban lake. It's not exactly Crater Lake, is what I'm saying. These photos were taken back in 2007, the same "mini-roadtrip" week that I went to Crater Lake, which may be why posting these didn't seem like a high priority. I had actually forgotten I'd ever been to Vancouver Lake until I ran across these photos in an old iPhoto library recently.

Since my visit there wasn't particularly eventful, I think we'll just go ahead and dive into the Oregonian historical database instead. (If there was a database of the Vancouver Columbian newspaper, that would be even better, or at least more comprehensive, but as far as I know it's not available online.) Most of the news items in the database are fairly routine: Hunting and fishing reports, real estate ads, farming news, occasional drownings, that sort of thing. I tried to only include items that stood out from the crowd or seemed relevant to why today's lake is the way it is, so hopefully it's an interesting list, as far as these things go. The pattern that emerges over the last century or so is one of Vancouver looking west, seeing this big lake, and thinking it ought to be useful for something or other. One grand scheme after another was proposed and argued about endlessly, and yet in 2013 much of the lake and the surrounding area still looks like the back of beyond, even though it's right next to the city proper.

For clarity I've broken the news items out into pre-1965, 1965-1983, and post-1983 sections, for reasons that will be come clear after the jump.

Ft. George Garden, Astoria

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I was rummaging through an old iPhoto library a while back and noticed I had a few photos of of the Ft. George Garden in Astoria, an overgrown rose garden surrounded by an ornate iron fence, on Exchange St. behind the Fort George Brewery. These photos were taken several years ago, shortly before the brewery opened. Apparently they've employed a gardener to look after the place, so it may not be as overgrown as it was the last time I was there.

The garden sits next to a small city park marking the site of Fort Astoria, a fur trading post founded in 1811, which happened to be the first American settlement on the Pacific coast. After only two years in business, the fort was sorta-captured by the British during the War of 1812, and spent the next 33 years as Fort George (as in King George the 3rd), an outpost of the Hudson's Bay Company. The post was later abandoned as the Hudson's Bay Company moved its main operations inland to Fort Vancouver. I don't know whether the garden itself has any particular historical significance. Based on the fencing I'm going to guess the garden (or at least the fence) dates to the late 19th or early 20th century, or later if someone was aiming for a retro look.

Julia Butler Hansen Bridge

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Several years ago, I did a post about the Wahkiakum County Ferry, which crosses the Columbia River between Westport, Oregon, and Washington's Puget Island. This was before bridges became a thing here on this humble blog, so I just included the above photo and noted there was a bridge from Puget Island to the Washington mainland, and moved on. Only later did I realize I'd made a serious omission, to the degree that anything on this blog counts as remotely serious. I'd decided a while back that I ought to include bridges to islands in my little project, for the sake of completeness, hence the posts last year about the Sauvie Island and Lambert Slough bridges. Clearly, a new bridge post was required here too.

I've had something of a mental block about reusing photos in multiple posts, so I entertained the notion that I needed to go back and take new photos specifically of the bridge. I think I'm sort of getting over that idea, though; I ended up reusing the same photos in multiple Cleveland bridge posts just because it's very difficult to take a photo of only one bridge there and not have three others in the background. I mean, I'm quite willing to go do something absurd and tedious for the sake of a blog post on a blog almost nobody reads. I think I've demonstrated that pretty conclusively already. It's just that I prefer it to be easy and not too time consuming. So I think we're going to go with the one recycled photo this time around.

In that spirit, let's move along. The Julia Butler Hansen Bridge connects Washington's Puget Island with the north bank of the Columbia at Cathlamet, WA. The bridge's HistoryLink.org page indicates it was once known simply as the Puget Island - Cathlamet Bridge until it was renamed in the late 1980s to honor the area's longtime state legislator & US Representative. Further downriver, a National Wildlife Refuge for the endangered Columbian White-Tailed Deer is also named in her honor.

Bridge proposals had been discussed repeatedly for several decades before today's bridge was built; in 1922 the states of Oregon and Washington studied bridging the entire river at Puget Island, rather than the bridge and ferry arrangement we ended up with. I imagine that would have been a massively expensive project had it been built, but the news article notes that one of the engineers doing the study was Conde McCullough, who designed many of the classic Art Deco bridges along the Oregon Coast. So it's hard not to daydream about what might have been. The eventual bridge is much more utilitarian-looking, and seems to have been built in part as a Depression-era stimulus project. It's not that visually captivating as far as bridges go, and I doubt it attracts many tourists on its own merits (I mean, it didn't even draw me back there), but it at least has its own Structurae & BridgeHunter pages. I tend to use that as a measure of whether a bridge is officially "obscure" or not, but I admit I may have something of a warped perspective on the subject.

The Cathlamet Chamber of Commerce has a brief catalog of things to see and do around Puget Island, many relating to its Scandinavian heritage. A 1953 Oregonian article gives a sense of just how physically and culturally isolated Puget Island once was, dubbing it "Little Norway", and noting that many residents once spoke Norwegian at home. The separate island culture more or less fell by the wayside after the bridge opened, and the local single-room schoolhouse closed in favor of school buses to the English-speaking mainland.

The bridge was dedicated on August 26th 1939, just days before the outbreak of World War II. In Washington DC, President Roosevelt pressed a button to officially open the bridge. Rep. Hansen presided over the ceremony, and various politicians and dignitaries spoke. US Senator Lewis Schwellenbach alluded to contemporary events as he spoke: "Senator Schwellenbach drew a parallel between the peaceful purposes for which America builds roads and bridges and the military use for which they are designed in Europe.". Sigh...

Celilo Park

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I was rummaging through old photos a while back, and realized I had a few from Celilo Park, on the Columbia River a few miles west of the Maryhill area. It's a pleasant little roadside rest area and boat launch, which as it turns out is operated by the US Army Corps of Engineers. It's operated by the Corps of Engineers because they also run the Dalles Dam, a few miles downstream.

Before the dam went in, the Celilo Park area was once home to Celilo Falls, an vast waterfall on the Columbia River, and a traditional fishing site for local Indian tribes since time immemorial. The falls weren't all that tall, but in terms of sheer annual volume of water Celilo Falls was once one of the largest waterfalls on earth. I would have liked to have seen that. At the time I took these photos, I don't recall there being so much as an interpretive sign explaining what had once been here; since then, a Maya Lin art project has gone in that commemorates the lost waterfall and its cultural importance.

There are a few videos on YouTube that give a glimpse of what the falls were like. This one was shot in 1956, the year before the falls were flooded by the dam:

The Dalles Dam project is widely regarded as a crime against the native people of the region. I absolutely agree with that, and I would love to see the dam removed and the falls come to life again. Opinions vary about how realistic of a dream that is, but hey. Realistic or not, it's a goal.

Haystack Rock, Cannon Beach

From the archives, a few circa-2007 photos of Haystack Rock at Cannon Beach, OR. Not to be confused with the other Haystack Rock further south at Pacific City. Or, according to Wikipedia, a third Haystack Rock far to the south in Coos County. Curiously, Wikipedia mentions zero Haystack Rocks outside of Oregon, so apparently we're alone in using agricultural metaphors to describe large-scale seaside geology. I have no explanation for why that might be, so feel free to grab that hypothesis and run with it for your dissertation, assuming you can prove it and you think it'll help.

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Abert Rim

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A couple of old photos of Abert Rim in SE Oregon, a bit north of Lakeview. These are old mini-roadtrip photos from 2007, and I didn't post them at the time because they're really not that great, and I only have two photos total, taken from a moving vehicle since I was on my way to Fort Rock that day and didn't have time to stop.

It doesn't appear there's really much more you can do here without a serious 4wd vehicle and then some serious backpacking gear (neither of which I happen to own), as Abert Rim is a BLM Wilderness Study Area.

For those unfamiliar with the term, "study" in this context means an administrative (rather than legislative) moratorium on development. It basically means the place is being held in reserve in case Congress ever decides to designate it as a full-blown wilderness area someday. So it's been awaiting a favorable political climate since July 1992, in fact, and it's pretty much a given the current chock-full-o-wingnuts Congress isn't going to take up the cause. The possibility of development here isn't an idle notion, either; there have been several proposals to build some sort of "pumped storage" hydroelectric project at adjacent Abert Lake, and the most recent proposal was only abandoned in 2009.

I'm not an anti-development zealot or anything, but it's easy to imagine how things could go very wrong here. It's easy to imagine rows of ugly million-dollar McMansions with million-dollar views lining the top of Abert Rim, the requisite golf course next to the lake, the whole thing fenced off and guarded by Taser-happy security guards to keep the locals and other riffraff out. And, naturally, a backroom deal so that residents don't pay property taxes or otherwise contribute to the local economy in any way. It's not hard to imagine; look what happened to Bend, after all.



In any case, the main reason I'm posting these photos now is because it's late April in Portland, and this endless, grey, chilly spring is dragging on and on, and I'd really rather post something with a bit of blue sky in it. I distinctly recall that it was a warm day when I took these photos. In fact the car windows were up because the AC was on. I vaguely recall what that was like...

From the Archives: Scenery near Crater Lake

I've now got a week's worth of staycation photos to sort through. Nearly 1200, in fact. In the meantime, here are a few from the archives, from 2007's mini-roadtrip. These were taken in Crater Lake National Park, but they aren't of Crater Lake itself, nor are they of the Pumice Desert just north of the lake. So even though they're quite scenic, they didn't make the cut. Until now. Enjoy!

Crook County Courthouse, Prineville

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Here are few more old mini-roadtrip photos, this time of the Crook County Courthouse out in Prineville. It looked like a cool old building, so I stopped and took a few photos. Actually I also stopped to check out a sort of art & craft fair in the park next door, but I ended up not buying anything or taking any photos of that.

A page at the Oregon State Archives describes the building thusly:

The first courthouse was a one story wooden structure at the corner of West 5th and Main Streets. In 1885 a two story wooden structure was built for $5,474. By 1905 this building was considered unsafe to store the county's records, and a $16,526 bid was accepted to erect a new, brick and stone courthouse. The building was completed in 1909, at a cost $48,590, and remodeled in the early 1990s with structural enhancements.

So it cost three times the original bid value. I'd call that a serious cost overrun. There's probably a fascinating and scandalous tale behind this, and I'd gladly pass it along if I knew what it was. But I don't, and I'm sorry. I could probably ask the local history museum if I was so inclined. I mean, unless it's a matter they don't discuss with outsiders.

Summer Lake

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A few old photos from Summer Lake, in far SE Oregon. No, really, there's a lake out there somewhere. Unlike many lakes in the area, it doesn't quite dry up in the summer (hence the name, I think), but it does shrink substantially.



The ODFW Summer Lake Wildlife Area attracts birdwatchers in the spring, and hunters in the fall and winter. I happened to drive through in mid-summer, and as you can tell there wasn't much going on. The visitor center wasn't open, and I didn't see anyone else there. Apparently there are access roads that take you closer to the actual lake, but I didn't realize that at the time. Plus I was on my way to Fort Rock right then, so I'm not sure I'd have made the detour anyway. And please note that that almost all of the photos were taken from a moving vehicle.



What I'm trying to say is that I do realize these aren't the most breathtaking photos I've ever posted here. That's probably why I didn't post them back in 2007 when I took them. But I figure it's November in Oregon, and even rather bland and uncomposed photos of desert and blue sky still make for a pleasant change of pace. Well, I though so, at least.

pumice desert, crater lake

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A few more old mini-roadtrip photos, this time from the Pumice Desert area in Crater Lake National Park. As this article explains, the sparse vegetation is due to poor soil (that would be the pumice part), rather than low precipitation. So I suppose this isn't technically a real desert, although it certainly looks like one. Either way, it's quite a peculiar landscape.

Doughboy Monument, Astoria

A few old (2007-ish) photos of the "Doughboy Monument", the slightly odd World War I memorial out in Astoria, at the corner of Marine Drive & Columbia Avenue, just east of the Astoria-Megler Bridge. The slightly odd bit is the low building that forms the base of the statue. It doesn't seem to have any obvious purpose, but it does. Any guesses? No? Why, it's a public restroom, of course. Really, it is. It dates back to the 1920's, when there seems to have been a mania for adding public restrooms to various improbable things, like the Oregon City Bridge for instance. I've never seen a good explanation for this. Did people just drink a lot more water than they do today? Beats me.

Astoria, Oregon Daily Photo has a nice post about the monument, including the various inscriptions around it. Which is nice, since they're are too small to see in my photos. The author expands on that in "Astoria's Doughboy Monument: Finding an angle", in which she tries to figure out a good angle to shoot it from. Busy backgrounds in most directions, and wayyy too many overhead wires. I remember running into this problem too when I took the photos in this post, and thanks in advance for pretending you hadn't noticed.

Portland Public Art covers the doughboy here, calling it "dull and mechanical". Also a mention of it (and the sculptor's many similar works) at ~westr. (Scroll down to the "Soldier's Monument" bit.)

The statue on top is titled "Over the top at Cantigny", by the sculptor John Paulding. Cantigny is a small town in France, and the site of the first WWI battle involving US soldiers. The town now features a large memorial to US troops, and another smaller one outside of town. Among those who served at Cantigny was Col. Robert McCormick, later the right-wing owner of the Chicago Tribune. I mention this because he had a 500 acre estate outside Chicago (now a park), which he named "Cantigny". The battle also lent its name to an Army transport ship of the 1920's.